Annette Arlander is a Helsinki-based artist, researcher and a pedagogue, one of the pioneers of Finnish performance art and a trailblazer of artistic research. She graduated as a director from Theatre Academy in 1981 and as Doctor of Art in 1999. Arlander was Professor of Performance Art and Theory at Theatre Academy 2001–13, Professor of Artistic Research 2015-16 at University of the Arts Helsinki and visiting professor at Stockholm University of the Arts. Her art work focuses on performing (in, with, through) landscape by means of video or recorded voice, in the border zone between performance art, video and environmental art.

People visiting or working on Harakka Island sit for a while in a swing attached to an aspen on the western shore of the island approximately once a week during the year of the snake between 10 February 2013 and 28 January 2014.